


A Taste of Fear

by onewiththeuniverse



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: From rotg_kinkmeme, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2017-12-12 18:16:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onewiththeuniverse/pseuds/onewiththeuniverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He can taste fear.  In the literal sense of the word.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dark Chocolate

**Author's Note:**

> From the prompt at http://rotg-kink.dreamwidth.org/2389.html?thread=4582229#cmt4582229  
> The prompter asked for a fic where Pitch can taste fears. This is what I posted.

He was being punished. That was the only possible reason for this new development.

It had been a shock at first when he discovered that in addition to sensing fears, he could now taste them. Literally. He'd spent a couple months recuperating in his home after being defeated by the Big Four (now Five), and on his first trip to the surface after that, he'd suddenly been hit with the faint taste of chocolate. Dark chocolate, to be precise. Thick and bitter. He'd realized that it was fear he was tasting when it became stronger as he followed it to its source. Sure, he could taste fears before, but that was more like knowing what someone was afraid of and drawing strength from it. It was a sixth sense, like cats knowing when an earthquake is about to hit. This was an actual taste. And it wasn't unpleasant.

The fear/chocolate originated in a darkened neighborhood. Trashy-looking houses lined the streets and here and there he could see broken glass and gum wrappers in the grass. The dim light revealed a dark stain in the street, and lewd graffiti had been spray painted on a couple buildings. He followed the fear/taste to a house on the corner and melted into the shadow cast by a tree, emerging from another shadow inside the house.

The room he appeared in was a bedroom. Its occupant was a little girl about six years old. She was huddled under the covers and hugging a stuffed bear. And she was afraid of the dark. How cute. He tilted his head, trying to decide on the best kind of nightmare to give her. The best nightmares were the ones that were shaped by the dreamer's subconscious, but sometimes Pitch liked to have a little creative input. There were so many possibilities because it wasn't just the darkness the children were afraid of; it was what could be hiding in it. And with his new ability to taste fears, he would savor the dream. He briefly wondered if other fears would taste differently.

From outside, there was the sudden sound of gunfire. The little girl whimpered and hugged her bear tighter. Pitch straightened up as the dark chocolate taste became even more bitter. The little girl wasn't just afraid of the dark; she was afraid of what was in it. This was a bad neighborhood, and she knew it. The bitterness was really starting to taste bad now, so Pitch left, blending into the shadows once again. She didn't need any help from him to have a nightmare tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update (12/19/2013): I have listed this work as complete because the chapters can be read as individual pieces. Any future chapters I may add will probably skip around the story's timeline a bit.


	2. Bloody Mary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was obvious. Really, he should have seen it coming.

It wasn’t just that he could taste fear now. It was the fact that whatever he tasted, he was actually consuming. Enough of it could make him feel full. Too much, and he would end up with a stomachache. After discovering that part of it, Pitch had made sure that he didn’t spend too much time sampling fear/tastes. Too much of a good thing, and all that. He was sure it was the Man in the Moon’s doing. The sentimental meddling fool just couldn’t leave anything alone. No, he had to make sure that the Boogeyman would not pull the same stunt again that he had last Easter. Fear made him powerful, but now… too much power and he would be sick. It was very hard to take over the belief of the children of the world when you had a stomachache.  
But he couldn’t resist the lure of a slumber party. He never could.  
When kids stayed up late watching terrible horror movies, oftentimes they had the most wonderful nightmares. He could stay and watch those nightmares for hours. And even if they didn’t fall asleep, it was wonderful just to drink in the waves of fear and paranoia rolling off them. They were a banquet in themselves, more so now that he could actually taste fears. Each nervous laugh was like chilled sweet white wine. Every time they jumped at noises (it wasn’t always the house settling; sometimes Pitch would purposely bang on the wall just to make them shriek) it was like ripe peaches. It was the perfect dessert.  
And then the little idiots decided to scare themselves even more.  
Pitch followed the group of girls out of the living room and down the hall. They did a quick “Eenie, Meenie, Miny, Moe” (the fear of being chosen tasted like lemons: sharp and sour) and Moe, afraid of what might happen (yuck, celery? That was unexpected, but the hint of chocolate wasn’t), entered the bathroom and shut the door. The other girls crowded outside the door, listening closely.  
“Bloody Mary.”  
Oh, that’s what they were doing. The hallway was dark, so Pitch used the shadow to appear inside the bathroom. The girl was facing the mirror (he was a being of the darkness; he could see in the dark, after all). She couldn’t see him, but she didn’t need to for what he had planned.  
“Bloody Mary.”  
Pitch couldn’t help the grin that split his face. The girl grew more and more scared every time she said the name. The celery was joined by tomato juice.  
The girl took a deep breath, hesitating before she said the name the final time. Pitch could now taste vodka in addition to the celery and tomato juice.  
“Bloody Mary!”  
Pitch put all he had into the burst of power he directed at the mirror, and was pleased when the image of a girl with red eyes appeared there long enough for the girl on his side of the mirror to see it and scream. (Her belief that something was going to happen made it possible for her to see the image.) She panicked trying to open the door while the girls on the other side of it were screaming and banging on it. Pitch may or may not have held the door shut while the girl desperately twisted and yanked on the doorknob. Finally she got the door open and rushed to the protection only her friends could offer her.  
Pitch returned to his home in good spirits. He was only a little disappointed that the fear of Bloody Mary actually tasted like Bloody Marys.


	3. Strawberries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The best kind of picnic is the one where everyone else brings the food.

Playgrounds were a good place to find fear. They were supposed to be a place for kids to have fun, but more often than not, the children would return home in tears. It was always one thing or another; they were bullied by other kids, they got stuck at the top of the slide because they were too afraid to go down it, the swing went too high and they fell off (or they were pushed off) and got hurt, and so on.  
This particular playground was no exception.

It was a warm summer day. The bright sun was blotted infrequently by the few clouds that broke the monotony of the otherwise endless blue sky. Families took advantage of the weather to go picnicking in parks. Children were running around willy-nilly, full of energy that they never seemed to be rid of until they became teenagers. And there was a variety of petty fears everywhere.  
Over there, a girl was studying a chemistry book at a picnic table. She was afraid of failing a test. Her fear tasted like sweet cherries. If she was afraid she would fail her test, why was she studying in the park? It was loud, and she was having trouble concentrating. Every couple minutes, she would look up and glance at the jungle gym. Oh. She was babysitting her brother while her parents were at a movie. He wanted to go to the park, and she wanted to study. They compromised. How nice of her.  
A toddler stood with his parents at the edge of the pond. His parents were trying to get him to toss crackers into the water for the ducks, but the three-year-old was having none of it. He was sobbing and clinging to his mother and refusing to even _look_ at the birds. His fear tasted like crackers. (Pitch assumed it was because the boy associated the crackers with the ducks.)  
A teenage boy sat with a teenage girl on a park bench. The boy really liked her, and he wanted to ask her out, but he was afraid of rejection. It tasted like chocolate truffles. The taste was gone almost as soon as he registered it when the girl allayed the boy’s fear. What a shame.  
Pitch continued to wander the playground, sampling fears he was already familiar with and learning what they tasted like. Most, he just sampled and moved on, lingering only by the more interesting flavors. So when he sensed/tasted the fear of falling/ripe strawberries, he had to investigate. Usually, the fear of falling was fleeting; there for a moment before the fear was realized and gone. This one was not disappearing. That was because it was shared by several children, all of them afraid that someone else was going to fall. Oddly, there was no fear from the individual for their own safety. That person was either a fool, or was in no danger of falling. But perhaps he could coax the fear from whomever it was.

Pitch followed the fear/taste to a spot in the park away from the play area. Behind a large flowering bush, he found the group of children from which the fear emanated. They were clustered together at the base of a giant tree, looking up at a boy sitting calmly on one of the higher branches. _Where are his parents?_ Pitch wondered. “You shouldn’t be up there,” he called up to the boy.  
“Look how high I am!” the boy shouted down to his friends. They called back, asking him to come down. The boy only grinned in response. He knew he could fall, but he wasn’t afraid of it. A fool, then. Pitch would change that. He would _make_ the boy afraid of heights.  
“You could fall. It’s a long way down.” He knew the boy couldn’t hear him, but suggestions of fear didn’t need to be heard. Whatever he said would worm its way into a person’s head and eat away at their certainty. All it took was an idea that something _could_ be, and their belief could be broken. “You could get hurt.”  
The boy remained infuriatingly unafraid.  
“ _Pay attention!_ ” Pitch snapped. Was he really so insubstantial that his fear suggestions weren’t registering? Experimentally, he sent a wave of fear at the girl studying at the picnic table. She was worrying about a previous question in the book, and when the wave of fear hit her, she responded by frantically flipping back to the corresponding page to double-check. Good. He still had some sway over the mortals’ fears. So why wasn’t the boy responding?  
“I’m gonna try to go higher!”  
Really?! “Were you dropped on your head as an infant?” _Why was he not afraid?_  
The boy began to climb higher.  
“Do you have a death wish?”  
The boy was now balanced in the crook of two branches.  
Pitch decided to try a different tactic. “You think you’re being brave? You’re not. You’re just being stupid.” Why were children so _dense?_ “Do you think your parents will approve of this foolishness?”  
That seemed to work. The boy’s grin faltered. He glanced in the direction of the pond. Pitch followed his gaze and saw two adults sitting together. His parents?  
There was a hint of worry from the boy. It tasted like tangerines.  
The boy’s parents appeared to be talking quietly to each other, ignoring everything that was more than three feet away from them. _The boy was afraid they might not love him._ Well, now.  
“Is this a cry for attention?” Pitch wondered, looking back up at the boy. “It won’t work. They’re too busy with each other to pay attention to you.”  
It worked. They boy’s fear magnified, and with it, the taste of tangerines gone sour. The sudden taste flooding his mouth made him stagger backward. Pitch wondered if he could get the same kind of reaction from the parents. At the same time, the boy began to cry.

When Pitch stepped out of the shadow of a tree by the pond, he was hit by the overwhelming taste of warm apple pie. The suddenness of it surprised him enough that he forgot for a moment what he was doing.  
“So, every other weekend during the school year?”  
“Yeah.”  
The adults were quiet for a moment. Though he could hear them well enough from where he stood (all spirits had heightened senses), Pitch moved closer.  
 _They were getting a divorce. They worried about how to tell their son. They wondered how he would take the news. They were afraid that he would hate them. They were afraid of how the divorce would affect him._  
The unspoken fears echoed loudly in Pitch’s mind. Fears concerning another person were always the strongest; the adults’ fears were like a brass choir in a concert hall. He wished they would _shut up._  
“So… what’s your apartment like?”  
“Uh, pretty basic. Two bedrooms, one bathroom. It’s close to his school, too.”  
A nod. “Good.”  
“I’m sorry to interrupt what is probably the most civil conversation you’ve had in months, but your son has decided that breaking his neck is the best way to get your attention.”  
Neither adult could hear him, but the suggestion that _something was wrong_ did not escape them. Both adults blinked and looked around. “Tommy?”  
Pitch rolled his eyes. “I don’t think he can hear you.”  
“I don’t see him.”  
No, really?  
“He’s not on the playground! Where did he go?”  
Did stupidity run in the family? “Try looking nearby.”  
“I’ll check the playground again,” the woman said. “Maybe he’s in one of the play tunnels.” She headed for the play area.  
“Well, that’s an idea. Better than sitting around.” Pitch turned to the man. “Well?”  
The man watched her go, then turned to look over the rest of the park. “He can’t have gone far,” he said to himself.  
“Oh, he didn’t. Why don’t you try over there?”  
The man frowned as his attention was inexplicably drawn to a corner of the park. He started to walk.  
“It’s about time,” Pitch said to no one. He followed the man.

When they reached the tree, he was again hit by the taste of strawberries, but this time it was from the father. It took a lot of encouraging from the man, but he got his son to climb down to a branch low enough that he could lift the boy out of the tree. Then he carried the boy back to the main part of the park. The woman saw them coming and ran over, sobbing with relief.  
“Where was he? I couldn’t find him anywhere?”  
“He climbed a tree over there. No wonder we couldn’t see him.”  
“You’re all pathetic,” Pitch said. Their reunion was so emotional, he thought he might develop an ulcer if he stayed any longer. He stepped into the closest shadow he could find and disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> Comments and constructive criticism are very welcome and will be taken seriously.


	4. A Sip of Beer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pitch has a hangover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the same universe as A Taste of Fear, but skipping ahead to well after Pitch “joins” the Guardians. In addition to feeding on/tasting fears, Pitch can have reactions to different fear/flavors, much like humans.

            As soon as Pitch stepped out of the shadows and into the room, he knew that this meeting was going to be the longest meeting of his life.  The cheery lights made his eyes water, and the sounds of the workshop (yetis building toys, yetis yelling, crashing sounds from the kitchen followed by high-pitched screaming and bellows of rage, and _everywhere_ , those damned jingling elves) made his head pound.  He wanted nothing but to return to his home and sleep it off.  But he couldn't.  If this was going to become a thing (which he hoped it wasn’t), he would need to stock up on aspirin.

 

            Halfway through the meeting, a yeti burst into the room.  The door banged into the wall sending waves of pain through his skull.  Pitch groaned and buried his head in his arms on the table as the yeti babbled in rapid Yetish at North.  Jack chuckled at the Boogeyman.

            “Knock first!” North said.  “How many times I have to say?  Knock first!”  He knocked on the table for emphasis.

            Pitch groaned again.  He felt like North was knocking on his skull instead of the table.

            “Pitch?  You okay?” Jack asked.

            “Perfectly fine,” Pitch replied testily.  “It’s just a migraine.”  He raised his head from his arms and sat up, attempting to look more dignified than he felt.

            Jack was silent for one blissful moment.  The moment ended far sooner than Pitch would have liked when Jack opened his mouth again.  “I didn’t know you could get migraines.”

 

            North was kind enough to call the meeting short, but not kind enough to let the suffering Boogeyman leave.  He had to make sure Pitch would be okay.  Then, in true North fashion, suggested that eggnog would make him feel better.

            “I don’t need more alcohol, North.”   Pitch knew very well that all the eggnog was spiced with rum, and declined.

            (“If he doesn’t want it, can I have it?” Jack asked hopefully.

            “No, Jack,” Bunny told him.)

            “ _More_ alcohol?  You came to a meeting _drunk?_ ” Tooth shouted.

            Pitch squeezed his eyes shut at the sound of her voice.  “Not so loud,” he said.  “I’m not drunk; I have a hangover.  And it’s _not my fault_.”

            "What caused this?" North asked.

            Pitch groaned.  "Surfers," he replied.  Their fears tasted like cheap beer.

            “You went to the beach?” Jack asked.  His mouth quirked into a smile as he imagined the Boogeyman visiting the beach, carrying a parasol made of nightmare sand to protect himself from the sun.

            “Yes,” Pitch said through clenched teeth.  “And I am _never_ doing that again.”

            It had started out fun, and while he didn’t care for the taste of beer, he felt he owed it to himself to catalogue every fear/taste he came across for future reference.  The trouble was that there were so many beer-flavored fears.  Some were light and crisp, some were thick, and some were watered (but he didn’t linger for those).  And all of them were from the same type of fear: the fear of looking like an idiot in front of the ones they were trying to impress.  (It was different from the fear/taste resulting from stage fright, which tasted like fine wine.)  When the surfers fell, or their fears came true, Pitch found it hilarious.

            It wasn’t until dark when the surfers had gone and Pitch was staggering down the boardwalk that he realized he was truly and properly drunk.  Had he been sober, he would have found the situation very unfunny.  (He hadn’t known spirits could get drunk.  Imagine that.)  But he _was_ drunk, and it _was_ funny, and it was a miracle he even made it back home that night.  (How was he still standing with the way the ground kept moving?)  The next morning, the only thing he could be thankful for was the fact that his home was dark.  He planned on avoiding beaches for the next century or two.

            “Wait a minute, how could the flavor make you drunk?” Bunny asked.  “It’s just a flavor, right?”

            “No.  I feed off fear, remember?  Now that is has flavor, I get everything that goes with it.”

            There was an awkward pause as everyone digested that statement.  Pitch was hit with a mix of peppermint, sea salt, chocolate, honey, and vanilla ice cream.  They were afraid he could get sick from the fear/tastes, and what would that mean for fighting the Nightmares?  They did kind of need him for that.  (Phil the Yeti was worried about the finish on the floor.)  He was starting to wish they would stop doing that.  It was getting annoying.  Then the vanilla ice cream was gone when Jack suddenly switched gears and thought of something else.

            “So…”

            Pitch decided he didn’t like his tone of voice.

            “Do you know any drinking songs?”


End file.
